Early into the 1985 blockbuster Rocky IV, the iconic boxer’s curmudgeonly brother-in-law receives a gift...

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Early into the 1985 blockbuster Rocky IV, the iconic boxer’s curmudgeonly brother-in-law receives a gift that at the time was emblematic of the distant future: a robotic butler.

The robot was able to serve birthday cake and cold beer, clean the house and croon positive affirmations.Professor Jun Miura.

Well, it’s 2018, and the future is now.

Professor Jun Miura of Toyohashi University of Technology in Japan has developed a human-support robot that is capable of monitoring patients’ activities, and carrying out a wealth of household tasks, from finding a pair of glasses to detecting potential fire hazards.

But unlike Rocky IV, Miura didn’t design these robots for the benefit of slovenly bachelors. His goal instead is to bolster the independence of Japan’s elderly.

“In light of the growth of the country’s aging population, the number of caregivers in the country is insufficient, and this number will only become smaller in the future. Robotic technologies will be necessary for dealing with this issue,” he said on the sidelines of a recent guest lecture at Skoltech.

Guided by this goal, Miura and his lab have developed a robot designed to serve as roving attendants to the elderly.

Machine + computer = robot

As a child, Miura was captivated by machines – trains having been his favorite. He took every opportunity to ride and photograph trains, a passion that ultimately drove him to study mechanical engineering in university.

In graduate school, his enduring fascination with locomotives converged with a newfound passion for the then-burgeoning field of computer science.

“I liked machines and I developed an interest in computers, and if you put together a machine and a computer, you get a sort of robot,” he said.

In graduate school he focused on Artificial Intelligence (AI), particularly as it pertains to recognition and planning.

“Recognition is to know what is happening in one’s surroundings. It is very important for the safe and intelligent behavior of a robot. It’s the basis of everything. Once you know what’s happening, you make a plan – how to move, how to interact and how to manipulate your surroundings,” he said.

Next-generation caregiving

Miura’s robotic caregivers use an array of cutting-edge technologies related to recognition and planning in order to monitor their patients and their surroundings.

They can detect and track individuals, objects and comprehensive scenes.

They can identify their patients in a crowd using a multiple feature-based re-identification method, as well as a facial-recognition technology that is able to identify an individual in a variety of lighting conditions.

They can detect potential health crises by memorizing their patients usual posture and gait, and alerting emergency services in the event of a fall or collapse.

Using a combination of 3D LIDAR (Light Detecting and Ranging) and movement detection technologies, they can monitor a patient’s behavior across a broad physical area.

These qualities combined, in many ways Miura’s robots mirror the behavior of human caregivers, but in reality, the roboticist will be the first to tell you that the last thing he wants to do is replace humans.

AI and the fate of human civilization

In December 2014, iconic physicist Stephen Hawking conveyed his concerns about the future of AI in no uncertain terms to the BBC, stating: “The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.”

In July 2017, SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk likewise warned a group of United States governors that – having been exposed to the latest emerging technologies – in his view, AI poses the most significant threat to humanity.

“AI is a fundamental existential risk for human civilization, and I don’t think people fully appreciate that,” he said in comments carried by NPR.

As a man who has dedicated his career to creating human-esque robots, Miura didn’t disagree with these statements. However, he was quick to point out that the current state of AI is a far cry from surpassing human intelligence.

“There are many levels of intelligence. Lower-level intelligence relates to reactive behavior, so, for example, touching something and noticing that it’s hot, so reacting with pain. Even this kind of base level intelligence is still being developed,” Miura said.

And in fact, he strives specifically to create AI that doesn’t come close to matching human intellect.

“My position is that we don’t want intelligence like humans. I see robots as machines that can make our lives more convenient or easier. I want to create robots that can replace lower-level human tasks; not robots that can replace humans in all aspects,” he said.

On the horizon

To date, Miura’s team has constructed three caregiving robots for research, each of which possesses a unique combination of mechanisms and sensors. And though they’ve generated a great deal of buzz, they have yet to enter the market.

Down the line, Miura plans to commercialize individual mechanisms and technologies, rather than one robot containing all of his innovations. This way, his work can be used to foster the creation of an array of robots that cater to individual needs.

Meanwhile, he continues to grapple with theoretical and technical challenges.

“On the theoretical side, it’s still difficult to detect the real state of a human; a human caregiver can notice a very slight change of state – such as if the patient begins to feel dizzy or a bit depressed. For a robot, this would be very difficult,” he said.

From a technical perspective, Miura explained, it’s tricky to keep a robot running around the clock.

But in the coming years, he expects to tackle these challenges, creating a robot that can cater to a broad range of patients’ needs.

“In the future, I anticipate that human caregivers will continue to provide patients with services that require very close interactions, and more perfunctory tasks, like carrying groceries or helping elderly clients get around, will be outsourced to robots,” he said.

]]>TASS: A multi-qubit quantum computer could be created in Russia within a yearhttp://www.skoltech.ru/en/2018/02/tass-a-multi-qubit-quantum-computer-could-be-created-in-russia-within-a-year/
Tue, 20 Feb 2018 13:08:06 +0000

Skoltech Professor Jacob Biamonte told TASS* in a recent interview that 50 qubits is right on the...

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Skoltech Professor Jacob Biamonte told TASS* in a recent interview that 50 qubits is right on the threshold of where quantum processors will definitively outperform classical ones.

A prototype of a 50-qubit quantum processor can be built in Russia within a year with the support of Vnesheconombank (VEB), the Foundation for Advanced Research (FPI) and VEB-Innovations, says head of Skoltech’s Deep Quantum AI Laboratory Professor Jacob Biamonte.

VEB, FPI, VEB-Innovations, MSU and Digital Economy met on the sidelines of the recent Russian Investment Forum in Sochi to sign an agreement on developing a Russian 50-qubit quantum computer.

Currently, there are only three 50-qubit computers in the world, which are expected to boast computing power unattainable by most modern bit computers.

“The groups involved have ample resources. With this support, a prototype of a processor of this magnitude should be possible to build in as little as a year. This prototype quantum processor can then be improved,” explained Professor Biamonte.

He believes that 50 qubits is right on the threshold of where quantum processors will definitively outperform classical ones. According to Biamonte, quantum processors will enable cutting-edge research and find broad use in quantum chemistry and biotechnology. Biamonte’s team would be specifically interested in using such processors to implement accelerated algorithms of deep machine learning based on the principles of quantum physics.

Machine learning systems are used in a wide array of applications in medicine, computer vision, robotics, AI, telemetry, etc. Machine learning solutions can be applied for image-based diagnosis, object recognition in images, detection of hardware defects and design of recommender systems, amongst other things. For example, Netflix uses machine learning methods to select movies based on the user enquiry record.

Project profile

Vnesheconombank, the Foundation for Advanced Research, VEB-Innovations, MSU and Digital Economy met on the sidelines of the recent Russian Investment Forum “Sochi-18” to sign an agreement on developing a Russian 50-qubit quantum computer.

The agreement sets out a framework for an integrated research and engineering project aiming to create a multi-qubit optical quantum simulator based of photon chips and neutral atoms, put together an appropriate research and technology infrastructure, conduct consultations and working meetings and take other actions as required for identifying and solving applied tasks relating to quantum technology.

*Article originally published in Russian by the TASS news agency. Reprinted by Skoltech with permission.

Under the guidance of Professor Artem Oganov, a group of Skoltech scientists prepared and...

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Under the guidance of Professor Artem Oganov, a group of Skoltech scientists prepared and delivered a special course of lectures on Materials Science for gifted schoolchildren from across Russia.

“My graduate students – Valery Royzen, Anastasia Naumova and Oleg Feya – and I invited academically gifted schoolchildren to attend the course. We first met these children on 1 September 2017, during an open lesson I taught in Yaroslavl. There, science enthusiasts from all over the country gathered. The kids were very inspired by our lessons and said they wanted to come to my lab at Skoltech. Their dream came true. They spent a week at Skoltech. They have now returned to their schools, but they hope to continue to interact with our lab. I think we’ve done very useful work,” Oganov said.

The course, which took place on 12-16 February, featured lectures on such topics as the Computational Design of Materials, Chemical Communication Theory and Numerical Methods and Scientific Programming. We also taught them the basics of chemical modeling and machine learning methods in the modeling of materials.

After completing the special course, the participants shared their thoughts on the event.

Andrei Nizhnekamsk, 17 years old: “This was a strange experience – not like school. It was a very cool feeling! I want to go further and deeper with my studies than ever before.”

Vladislav Moscow, 17 years old: “I’m not a chemist at all, and for me this was an introduction to real science. It is very pleasant to immerse yourself in a real scientific environment, to perceive how chemists live and think.”

Anya Belgorod, 16 years old: “My main takeaway, surprisingly, was peace of mind! Seeing that such a place exists – with scientists, laboratories and this cultural environment – made me somehow calmer. We feel at home here. It’s great that we were invited; it was a unique experience. We have never experienced anything like this before. Many thanks to Professor Oganov and the others for the invitation!”

Grigory Izhevsk, 16 years old: “I’m at Skolkovo for the first time. The buildings and laboratories had the biggest impact on me. I cannot believe that in Russia there can be such a large-scale scientific center with world-class scientists. Like in the movies! Thanks to Skoltech for bringing the future to the present!”

The Skoltech Center for Data Intensive Biomedicine and Biotechnology is proud to announce for the third time...

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The Skoltech Center for Data Intensive Biomedicine and Biotechnology is proud to announce for the third time an open call for research fellowships in Systems Biology. The program is made possible through a generous support from Philip Morris Sales and Marketing. This competitive program is open to advanced graduate students and recent postdocs from Russian higher education establishments and research institutions. This program is coordinated by Skoltech professors Mikhail Gelfand, Dmitri Pervouchine and Dmitri Chudakov. A transparent procedure involving international scientific expertise will be implemented to select the best proposal for three years’ of support of basic research in the broad field of systems biology and data-intensive biology, which is in the main focus of biomedical research at Skoltech. Up to five winners will be announced in May 2018 by the Board, which consists of Prof. Manuel Peitsch, the Chief Scientific Officer of Philip Morris International, Dr. Dalia Cohen, Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of the the RNA Medicines Company, and Konstantin Severinov, Director of the Skoltech Center for Data Intensive Biomedicine and Biotechnology. In addition to support for their projects, fellows will be provided with mentorship opportunities through networking with best Russian and international scientists in the field. For further questions, please contact Maria Kolesnikova (tel. +7 495 280 14 81,*protected email*).

The Skoltech Center for Data Intensive Biomedicine and Biotechnology is proud to announce for the third time...

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The Skoltech Center for Data Intensive Biomedicine and Biotechnology is proud to announce for the third time an open call for research fellowships in Systems Biology. The program is made possible through a generous support from Philip Morris Sales and Marketing. This competitive program is open to advanced graduate students and recent postdocs from Russian higher education establishments and research institutions. This program is coordinated by Skoltech professors Mikhail Gelfand, Dmitri Pervouchine and Dmitri Chudakov. A transparent procedure involving international scientific expertise will be implemented to select the best proposal for three years’ of support of basic research in the broad field of systems biology and data-intensive biology, which is in the main focus of biomedical research at Skoltech. Up to five winners will be announced in May 2018 by the Board, which consists of Prof. Manuel Peitsch, the Chief Scientific Officer of Philip Morris International, Dr. Dalia Cohen, Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of the the RNA Medicines Company, and Konstantin Severinov, Director of the Skoltech Center for Data Intensive Biomedicine and Biotechnology. In addition to support for their projects, fellows will be provided with mentorship opportunities through networking with best Russian and international scientists in the field. For further questions, please contact Maria Kolesnikova (tel: +7 495 280 14 81, email: *protected email*).

The total amount of support is 630,000 rubles per year. The funds for Project implementation will be remitted by wire transfer to the Fellow’s account after all necessary reports are submitted. The total sum of the 3-year support amounts up to 1,890,000 rubles.

On a historically snowy Saturday afternoon in early February, dozens of resident children and teens...

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On a historically snowy Saturday afternoon in early February, dozens of resident children and teens crowded into the auditorium of a Moscow Region orphanage with one thing on their minds: science.

Fueled by a desire to give back to the community that has become their home away from home, an international team of Skoltech students organized a science fair for the Mytishchi School of Musical Education.

By all indications, the event was a hit.

“Our children were fascinated. There was a lot of interesting content, and above all, it was very informative,” said Galina Seregina, a teacher at the school.

She praised the Skoltech team for teaching lessons in a broad range of subject areas, and for engaging the kids immediately in a rousing game of bingo, which required them to race around the auditorium in search of people who satisfied various criteria, such as having met a famous person.

Between bingo and a series of visually riveting and interactive presentations, the Skoltech team transformed an initially timid group of kids into a cohort of unabashed science enthusiasts.

A lasting gift

The event was largely the brainchild of Laura Elidedt-Rodriguez, a second year MSc student from Mexico.

Previously, she had been invited to deliver a presentation on Mexican culture at the Mytishchi school, which was founded in 1937 as an orphanage and musical training academy that fed into Red Army military bands. Nearly a century later, music remains a core component of its educational offerings.

“When I arrived here and met all of these kids, I realized I would like to do something more for them,” she said.

But rather than donating toys or clothing, she wanted to give them something that could last a lifetime – one that her fellow Skoltech students would be uniquely suited to provide: scientific knowledge.

“The skills and knowledge we have acquired at Skoltech will be more valuable to these kids than typical gifts,” said Rodriguez. “They may get inspired by science, and it could have an impact on their lives.”

Fossils, stars and Cryogenics

Rodriguez teamed up with MSc students from across Skoltech’s research areas to create kid-friendly lessons in Physics, Biology, Space, Robotics and Geology.

They even made time for a bit of Cryogenics: At one point, Rodriguez and Data Science student Grecia Diaz, also from Mexico, used dry ice to flash freeze a rose, much to the excitement of the children, who could barely contain themselves while waiting for the opportunity to feel the frozen petals.

Shortly after, Rodriguez and Diaz mixed dry ice with juice, and then handed out the drinks – spilling over with heavy fog – to the very eager attendees.

The kids also had the opportunity to learn about the legendary Elon Musk, and to find out how many containers of instant noodles you could buy for the cost of a small satellite (600 million packs of Russian-student favorite Doshirak).

They were able to learn the DNA structure of a banana, peer into the night sky of the Northern Hemisphere – complete with LED-lit constellations – and learn to fit a hardboiled egg through the narrow mouth of a glass bottle.

They had the opportunity to see how oil and gas reservoirs work, and – thanks to Hydrocarbon Recovery student Valentina Ekimova’s willingness to share her private mineral collection – to hold a million-year-old fossil and other precious stones.

“I wanted to show that geology isn’t just boring science; it’s really interesting and visual,” she explained.

//Spreading the joy of science

Similar to Ekimova, many of the Skoltech students said they were inspired to participate based on a desire to ignite in their young attendees a passion for science, and to do something meaningful beyond their coursework while in Russia.

According to Diaz, “I used to participate in different volunteer activities when I was in Mexico specially related to kids, so when Laura told me about the idea to organize something for these kids I didn’t hesitate to say yes and do everything in my power to make it possible. It is a great opportunity to give back the community we now belong to, and what better way than to share our knowledge and motivate kids to get into science. I was glad to receive a positive response from my colleagues when we solicited volunteers to take part in this activity. I hope to have the opportunity to collaborate in more activities like these.”

Charles Belina, an Advanced Materials student from the United States, was among her fellow students who readily agreed. “I’ve been looking for an opportunity to give back to the community, and I was glad to find that Skoltech offered something like this,” he said.

Oleg Sudakov, who manned the Physics table alongside Belina, agreed. “It’s nice to do something good for the community and get people interested in science. I wanted to show the kids something that could be easily done at home if they wanted to repeat the experiments themselves. I also wanted to show them how science entangles our everyday life, and how it could be used in things that surround us,” he said.

Shreya Santra, a second-year Space MSc student, echoed: “I’m always interested in science fairs and interacting with children, so this was a nice opportunity.”

Expanding to the Skolkovo International Gymnasium

Having already prepared a series of kid-friendly lessons, the Skoltech team decided to bring their science fair the following week to the children of the Skolkovo International Gymnasium, a K-12 school within the Skolkovo ecosystem.

The gymnasium program came with a couple of added attractions, including liquid-nitrogen ice cream and a tai chi-teaching robot – courtesy of Professor Dzmitry Tsetserukou, head of the Skoltech Intelligent Space Robotics Lab.

Ekimova was wowed by the intellectual voracity of the kids at both schools. “It was amazing that so many children were interested in science. During the space presentation, there were many, many questions. They came into it with hardly any knowledge about sputniks, but they were really enthusiastic.”

Rodriguez added that she was inspired by the openness of the children at both the orphanage and the gymnasium. “In both spaces, the kids were very self-confident and very open, even with those of us who don’t speak Russian. I think it was good to see the difference in the new generation, and how open they are to internationals,” she said.

Skoltech Community Communication Manager Ido Nativ, who heads the Student Life Office, expressed gratitude for the MSc students’ efforts to spread the joy of science. “Their contribution to strengthening ties within the Skolkovo ecosystem makes me very happy, as does the fact that they’re taking time away from research to do something for the community,” he said.

In total, 15 Skoltech students were involved in making the two science fairs a success: Space instructors Galya Chikunova, Andrey Chemikhin, Shreya Santra and Oksana Rusanova; Physics instructors Charles Belina and Oleg Sudakov; Biology instructors Laura Rodriguez, Maria Nazarova, Anna Zdanova and Grecia Diaz; Geology instructors Julia Vasina, Dmitriy Tikhomirov and Valentina Ekimova; and Robotics instructors Miguel Cabrera and Boris Voloskov. The Skolkovo-based science fair was organized in large part by Tamara Banjevic, a Skoltech graduate who currently works as a science teacher at the gymnasium.

Skoltech was honored with the Rising Star of Citation Impact award for its dramatic increase...

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Skoltech was honored with the Rising Star of Citation Impact award for its dramatic increase in publications during the Web of Science Awards ceremony in Moscow Thursday evening.

Award organizers Clarivate Analytics said the Rising Star award is presented to research institutions that significantly increase their publication activity over the course of a year, both with respect to quantities of published articles and subsequent citation scores.

Skoltech President Alexander Kuleshov was thrilled to receive the award, and attributed the honor to the hard work and dedication of the institute’s world-class faculty.

“For some time now, we have been doing very well as far as publication activity goes. Skoltech is on par with leading young universities around the globe with respect to high impact publications,” he said, noting that the institute will strive to build its publication momentum even further, guided by the goal of having a noticeable impact not only in Russia, but internationally as well.

“In 2017 we published a lot of papers in high-profile journals, and it’s particularly nice that most papers have as first or co-authors Skoltech PhD and MSc students. It’s really them who should be congratulated. Most of the published work from our lab is on new antibiotics and CRISPR. The latter is a very hot topic that I hope will be aggressively developed in Russia. CDIBB is working on this with the support of our Next Generation Program grant with MIT Professor [and CRISPR pioneer] Feng Zhang. I also take pride in the Rising Star award as I know that in no small measure, the success of Skoltech is due to publications by professors and students from our center,” he said in an interview following the ceremony.

Oganov, a member of the Russian Presidential Council for Science and Education was named the most highly cited Russian researcher in the field of physics in 2016, and though he was again the most highly cited in his field in 2017, Clarivate Analytics have a policy against issuing the same award two years in a row.

Thus he was invited to this year’s ceremony to be honored for his success.

The much decorated crystallographer delivered a speech in which he disclosed the secrets of success and impact: “First, to love science. The main secret of success is to love what you do. Second, to select and train the brightest students and postdocs. Without a strong team you cannot do challenging things. Third, to expand horizons without being afraid to tackle completely new and challenging problems. And fourth, be yourself and be different, do different things from what everyone does, do things that people consider slightly crazy. People told me it was crazy to try to solve some of the problems I have solved – but my efforts turned out to be a big success. Some said it was crazy to return to Russia – but I did it and it was the best decision in my life.”

Web of Science is a search platform that integrates academic and patent databases. Since 2016, it has been managed by Clarivate Analytics. Prior to that, it was owned by Thomson Reuters.

In a finding that could accelerate the development of next-generation wearable and flexible electronics, a...

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In a finding that could accelerate the development of next-generation wearable and flexible electronics, a team of Skoltech scientists led by Professor Albert Nasibulin have discovered a revolutionary means of improving the optical and electrical properties of carbon nanotubes.

The touch-electronics market is growing rapidly and requires new material solutions. These next-generation electronics must be flexible, stretchable, have enhanced battery life and be usable outdoors.

The transparent metal oxide films currently favored by the industry have several drawbacks, including with respect to reflection, brittleness, bendability the high cost of raw materials and environmentally damaging resource extraction processes. These drawbacks limit the utility of these films for next-generation devices like wearable electronics, display technologies and photovoltaics.

Films made of single-walled carbon nanotubes could replace their metal oxide counterparts in future electronics. In comparison to metal oxide films, those made of single-walled carbon are flexible, durable, and chemically stable. However, in order to become viable replacements, the opto-electrical characteristics of carbon nanotube films need to be improved.

The Skoltech team successfully developed single-walled carbon nanotubes films that match their metal-oxide counterparts with respect to opto-electrical characteristics. In particular, the team succeeded in this by revising the doping process. Doping – the act of covering a surface with a thick liquid – is a pivotal step when it comes to changing a material’s electrical and optical characteristics.

“In this work, we used gold chloride as the most effective dopant for the single-walled carbon nanotubes films. We were able to improve the opto-electrical characteristics of the films by optimizing the doping solvent and conditions. We have examined and demonstrated the effect of several of the most common solvents at different temperatures on the opto-electrical characteristics,” said Skoltech PhD student Alexey Tsapenko, who was the lead author of the study.

The results of the study show state-of-the-art optoelectrical characteristics, with a sheet resistance value of as low as 40 Ω/□ at the transmittance of 90% in the visible range. The reported value demonstrated a superior performance increase of films based on single-walled carbon nanotubes compared to previously conducted and discussed research in literature.

The results of the study have been published in Carbon scientific journal.

Wondering what SpaceUp is? SpaceUp is a worldwide leading interdisciplinary Space ‘unconference’ concept specially designed to facilitate...

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Wondering what SpaceUp is?

SpaceUp is a worldwide leading interdisciplinary Space ‘unconference’ concept specially designed to facilitate the free exchange of ideas. It is a participant driven event, i.e., everyone who attends SpaceUp is encouraged to give a talk, moderate a panel, or start a discussion. Participants are wlcome to discuss any space or astronautics-related topic from any discipline like astrophysics, cosmology, engineering, biochemistry, human physiology, business, law, policy, art, culture, fiction, etc.